Disposable vape ban in Wales to start in 2025

At 10.30pm on Sunday 28 January, the UK government announced that disposable vapes will be banned. Their reasoning focuses on tackling the rise in youth vaping, and follows their consultation on smoking and vaping from October 2023.

Rogue retailers, smugglers and tobacco company shareholders will be rubbing their hands together in glee at today's news that disposable vapes are to be banned in the UK.

The new bill seeks to ban disposable vapes altogether and also gives the government the power to clamp down on the way vapes are marketed, which could lead to plain packaging, restrictions on flavours and rules on how vaping products are displayed in shops.

We wholeheartedly agree that children shouldn't have access to vaping, but banning disposable products is not the way to do it. This counterproductive legislation will put children at greater risk by boosting the black market and making it easier for them to access illegal and potentially dangerous vapes. It is already illegal to sell vapes to minors, but enforcement of the law is woeful.

We believe this is a short-sighted move and a cynical vote-buying exercise that could leave millions of adult vapers without the legitimate products that keep them from going back to smoking.

When will disposable vapes be banned?

The honest answer at this stage is that we don't know. It all depends on the scope of the Bill and whether they intend to push it through as an amendment to existing legislation (such as environmental legislation) or whether it is decided that a new Bill is needed.

We will be following the progress of the Bill closely once it is published and will keep you updated.

Can you still buy legitimate disposable vapes in the UK?

Although the headlines would have you believe that the ban is imminent, until the bill is actually passed into law we will still be able to legally sell them to you.

Even if/when the legislation is passed, the chances are that legitimate retailers will be given a sell-through period to clear the shelves of existing stock.

We’ve been closely following all of the interviews with ministers today, and can glean from their responses that you will likely be able to buy legitimate disposable vapes in the UK until early 2025.

Why are disposable vapes being banned?

In the Prime Minister’s announcement, tackling the rise in youth vaping and protecting children’s health is cited as the key motivator for the ban on disposables.

The other issue being mentioned, albeit not nearly as emotively, is the growing concern over the impact of single-use vapes on the environment.

We discussed both of these issues last year when the Local Government Association (LGA) first called upon the government for an outright ban on the manufacture and sale of disposables, and concluded that neither issue warrants (or would benefit from) banning the products.

There are already laws in place that make it illegal to sell vapes to anyone under the age of 18. It is the disgraceful lack of enforcement of these laws that has led to this problem, not the products themselves. As responsible vaping retailers, we already have strict age verification procedures in place. A ban will only stop us from helping adult smokers quit and stay quit; it will not stop rogue retailers from selling illegal disposables to children.

The environment is an important issue and we take it very seriously. That is why we encourage our customers to recycle vaping products responsibly and to switch to more environmentally friendly vaping products once they know that vaping is the right way for them to quit combustible tobacco products.

The government would be better advised to offer more support and funding to improve recycling schemes. Banning disposables won't get them off our streets and out of landfill. The surge in black market products that will inevitably follow this ban will generate as much or more disposable waste.

How will a disposable vape ban be enforced?

Within the announcement, the government promised £30m of new funding every year to “bolster enforcement agencies - including Border Force, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and trading standards - to implement these measures and stamp out opportunities for criminals.”

While this sounds like action is being taken, in actual fact it won’t go anywhere near far enough to provide the levels of enforcement required to act as a deterrent for illicit disposable vape sales.

Over a decade of cuts to trading standards alone has seen their budgets cut by 50%, meaning that a 30m increase across both trading standards and Border Force won’t scratch the surface.

Millions of illegal, potentially harmful, vapes have been seized in the last three years; yet Kate Pike, the lead officer at the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, warned last year that the figures are likely to be the “tip of the iceberg” in terms of how many non-compliant vapes are being sold in UK shops.